How the housing market in your state determines who will win the mid-term elections

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Is there a correlation between the health of a local housing market and its election results? According to housing data provider RealtyTrac, there is.

RealtyTrac’s 2014 Election Housing Scorecard report compares housing health in 1,547 counties nationwide today to two years ago and makes election predictions based on whether they are better off, worse off or a toss-up. The real estate information firm based the housing health of a county on five factors: unemployment rates, foreclosure starts, median home prices and the percentage of seriously underwater homeowners.

With three weeks to go before the election, RealtyTrac’s Housing Scorecard looks at the housing market in eight highly contested Senate races: Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana and North Carolina.
According to Daren Blomquist, vice president of RealtyTrac, races in areas where the housing market is better off than it was two years ago will favor the incumbent, or the incumbent’s party.

“Whether because of good government policy, sheer luck or otherwise, the majority of county housing markets in six of the eight states with close U.S. Senate races are better off than they were two years ago. This should favor the incumbent, or the incumbent’s party, all else being equal — which of course we know it is not,” said Blomquist. “The only exceptions were Iowa and Alaska, where the majority of county housing markets were classified as toss-ups compared with two years ago.”

A total of 52% of all 1,547 U.S. counties analyzed were categorized as better off compared to two years ago, while 11% fell into the worse-off category and 36% were categorized a toss-up. A total of 50% of the total population in all housing markets analyzed for the report were in the better-off category, while 9% were in the worse-off markets and 41% were in the toss-up pile.

Click on any of eight states below to see their housing markets and who is predicted to win.